Intellectual Property In Communication Technology – Make Your Strategy Pay

Communication technology is an area where the importance and financial value of intellectual property is relatively visible; there have been recent well publicised disputes involving Nokia and Qualcomm and RIM (Blackberry) and EU and other high level discussions of issues surrounding standardisation and IP.

Thus few players in the field are ignorant of the potential importance of IP to a venture. It is sometimes less clear, particularly to newer or smaller entrants to the field, how they might get to the position of having the upper hand, or at least a fighting chance, in an IP skirmish with a bigger or more established competitor.

It is worth noting that such skirmishes can be overt, such as an outright clash of rights, or hidden, such as a competitive tender against a party claiming to have rights making him a more attractive bidder. An answer is not simply to spend more money on building up an